Doing her best to minimize the amount she twisted and moved him, in case the bullet had ended up someplace grim, she levered him partway up and checked for an exit wound or other injuries on the front of his body. She didnt find either, which was both good news and bad: good news because his injury seemed localized and treatable, assuming the bullet hadnt punched through to something internal; bad news because she didnt know where the damned thing had gone.
Easing him back down onto his flat stomach, trying not to remember how hed slept like that, his face smashed into the pillow, his long limbs sprawled toward her, onto her, some part of him always touching some part of her, she rose and headed deeper into the house, through the smallish, oddly arranged rooms that shed decorated to blend one into the next, with neutral, mossy colors and richly patterned curtains.
She took the stairs leading up to her office and the bedroom, and tried not to remember the night she and Romo had made love on the landing, early in their relationship. Theyd been out with her friends, teasing each other with looks and touches, with no question in either of their minds where and how the night would end. They hadnt even made it all the way up the stairs before theyd collapsed, twined together, needing each other so much it had seemed like madness.
Blushing, she stepped into her office, crossing quickly to the locked gun cabinet in the far corner, where she kept not only the small .22-caliber handgun shed purchased just after al-Jihads reign of terror began, but also her medical supplies. The elegant cabinet was far more gracefuland much less expensivethan a safe. She dialed in the combination and popped the door, then stood and stared for a second at the large tackle box shed outfitted as a field kit.
Shed freshened her supplies regularly over the past year. With al-Jihad hitting targets in and around Bear Claw, shed wanted to be prepared for emergencies. Shed never actually used the thing, though. Had hoped shed never have to. She couldnt handle the immediacy of living medicine, the emotions. Now, facing the prospect of working on a man shed known intimately, a man shed loved, she quailed. Shed never understood how her mother reveled in the godlike act of cutting into living flesh. Then again, shed failed to understand a number of her mothers choices over the years.
You can do this, she told herself, squaring her shoulders and reaching for the medical kit. You have to do this. Hed trusted her enough to put his life and safety in her hands. She would reward that trust by patching him up. Then, once hes awake, Ill get some answers out of him, she thought as she returned to his side. Now that she had a plan of sorts, her emotions were starting to shift from dizzying relief at finding him incredibly, impossibly aliveto anger at the deception hed perpetrated, and his presumption that shed take him in and treat his wounds on the basis of a note that explained less than nothing.
Leave it to slick, handsome, charming Romo Sampson to assume shed take care of him after what hed done to her.
Bastard, she muttered under her breath, holding on to the anger because it steadied her hands as she cut away his jacket and black T-shirt, revealing the strong lines of his back, the angry bullet wound and the streaks of forming bruises.
She removed the bulk of his clothing, save for his boxers, which were cheap chain-store wear, and nothing like what he wouldve worn before.
Shoving that thought aside, she piled several blankets over him, then turned up the heat in the living room. She had to get him warm and find a way to get his fluid volume up. But at the same time, she knew she had to be smart, too; she needed to protect herself if things proved more complicated than her more optimistic hypothesisthat hed been undercover, the blood spatter was from a clean kill of one of the terrorists, and he was in the clear, fully sanctioned for whatever hed done.
A quiver in her belly warned that the explanation, when she got it, probably wouldnt be that neat. Romo had never been one to make things easyeither on her or on himself.
His clothes were damp with sweat and blood, and streaked with dirt and other substances. His pockets were empty save for her spare key; a quick search revealed that he wasnt carrying any wallet, ID, or weapon. She placed his clothes and boots in a paper bag and taped it shut, signing her name across the tape. Then she locked the bag in the gun cabinet. It wasnt a perfect chain of evidence and probably wouldnt be admissible in court, but it was the best she could do under the circumstances.
Its just in case, she told herself, and worked very hard not to think about what some of those cases might be.
Returning to him, she found that his color was a little better, his flesh a little warmer beneath the blankets. It seemed very strange that her patients skin was flesh-toned and body temperature, but she shoved aside the oddity, locking it down along with her emotions and telling herself to woman up and do what needed doing.
She set him up on a portable monitor that told her what she already knew: his blood pressure, pulse and respiration were all dangerously depressed. Knowing she needed to get his vitals headed on the upswing, she started him on a saline drip. If it came to it, shed transfuse him with her own blood. She was a type O, a universal donor. But God help her, she hoped it didnt come to that. Shed already given him everything she intended to of her inner self.
Soon, though, his numbers started coming back up, and his skin and gums pinked, indicating that the shock was fading. Which left her with the bullet wound.
She followed the bruise tracks with her fingers, probing as deeply as she dared. She found three spots where she was pretty sure she felt something. The bullet had fragmented. Damn it.
Doing the best she could, she pulled on sterile gloves, cleaned and numbed the three spots, then chose one and used a scalpel to dissect away the skin and muscle. Without clamps or suction, blood welled immediately, obscuring her working field. She cursed and blotted it with a sterile pad, but gave that up almost immediately as pointless. Instead, she resigned herself to working blind, probing with the scalpel, then forceps.
Come oncome on She was breathing heavily, sweating more from nerves than exertion. Then she felt the forceps lock on to something hard and metallic. Ah! Gotcha.
She dropped the bloodstained fragment in a specimen jar, used stitches to close the muscle and incision and then repeated the process twice more. By the time she was done, shed nearly gotten used to the fact that when she cut into him, he bled. Yet although his vitals had stabilized where they needed to be, he hadnt moved or made a sound. He just lay there, breathing. In and out. In and out.
Forcing herself not to watch the rhythmical fall of his back, she returned to her work, stitching up the last of the three cuts before turning her attention to the recovered fragments. When she pieced the ragged bits of metal together in their specimen jar, it looked as though shed gotten all of the projectile. The metal was deformed, making it impossible for her to be sure, but without an X-ray, there wasnt much more she could do.
She cleaned the entry wound as best she could, then closed it as well, leaving a spot at the bottom for drainage. Finally, she hit her patient with a whopping dose of a broad-spectrum antibiotic. That, plus crossing her fingers, was going to have to be enough. She debated over the painkiller choices she had on-hand, and went with the mildest. Hed be hurting when he awokeshe deliberately thought when, not if, as though positive thinking would be enough to pull him out of the deep unconsciousness that continued to hold on to him. But it was that very unconsciousness that meant she couldnt give him one of the stronger painkillers, which had sedative effects.
She needed him to wake up, needed to get a grip on whether the head injury that had blown his pupils to uneven sizes had caused serious damage. If it had, shed be doing him a major injustice keeping him hidden. But it wasnt as if she had a CAT scan or an MRI handy.
Her training warred with her conscience. She knew she should take him to the ER, where he could be properly cared for. But at the same time, despite what had happened between them, she had to believe that Romo never would have perpetuated a fraud of any sortnever mind faking his own deathif it hadnt been absolutely necessary.
As a child, hed lived through scandal and a trial when his businessman father had been framed for embezzlement by a coworker. Thanks to solid police work and an ambitious public defender on her way up the political ladder, Romos father had been acquitted, the other man jailed. Gratitude, and that early exposure to justice, had set Romo on his path to a career in law enforcement.
Sara had heard the story for the first time at his funeral. She also hadnt realized hed come to Bear Claw via the Las Vegas PD. That itd taken his funeral for her to learn that much about his past had bothered her. At the same time, itd made her wish she could have one last chance to confront him. Shed imagined herself demanding to know what had gone wrong between them, why hed done what hed done, even knowing about her past and how badly his actions would hurt her.
Now, though, her sketchy knowledge of his childhood only served to reinforce Saras instinct to follow the instructions in his note. Hed gone into police work looking for justice, undoubtedly moving into internal affairs for the same reason. And though he might leave something to be desired on a personal level, she simply couldnt see him joining the terrorists cause.
Having done what she could for him, she leaned back on her heels and considered her options. She couldnt lift him by herself, and even if she could, shed risk tearing the heck out of the stitches. So hed be staying on the floor for the time being. She did manage, through a combination of leverage and no small amount of tugging, to get a thin camping mattress underneath him, helping keep him warm as well as getting him off the bloodstained floor.
Ill deal with the cleanup later, she said aloud, wrinkling her nose. But, the immediate issues dealt with, she became aware that she was a mess, and the room didnt smell all that pretty. Maybe she should deal with cleanup sooner than later. This was her home, after all.
Trying not to wonder why hed come to her rather than whoever hed been working with since his faked death, she moved around the house, closing the curtains and shutting the blinds, lest a casualor not so casualobserver chanced to look in the windows. As she did so, small shivers marched their way along her skin, warning her that she hadnt yet thought through all the ramifications of what shed done, or the question of what she was planning to do next.
Life or death, hed written. If the terrorists knew about him, if he feared they would kill him if he surfaced, then wouldnt it stand to reason that theyd be looking for him? But if that were the case, why wouldnt he want Fax, Seth and the few other agents he trusted to know he was alive? Again, why had he come to her?
That made her pause. What if he really had been working for
No, she said aloud, refusing to go there. The Romo shed known would never in a million years have switched sides. She knew that for certain. Everything else was just going to have to wait until he woke up.
Still, partly because she didnt want him hurting himself if he started thrashing, partly because her head wasnt quite as sure of him as her heart wanted to be, she pulled a couple of bungee cords from the camping equipment she kept piled in her office closet. Wrapping the cords around his waist and over his wrists, she bound his arms, then did the same with his ankles.
He didnt stir over the next couple of hours, as she showered and changed, made herself a quick dinner and then freshened the living room as best she could. Finally, near midnight, her body drained of the frenetic, nervous energy that had been driving her up to that point, and she sagged with a sudden onslaught of fatigue.
Romo was stable enough for her to detach the monitors and saline as he moved into the recovery phase of his injuries, when shed need to be watching for infection or other signs that shed missed something with the relatively crude care shed been able to provide. Telling herself it only made sense to stay near him, in case problems arose during the night, she clicked on a night-light in the kitchen to provide a low level of illumination, and bedded down on the couch with a couple of pillows and a thick, soft afghan.
Although she ached with fatigue, her brain kept her restless and wide-awake for far too long. It took almost superhuman effort not to watch him sleep and wonder what had happened to him, what would happen next. It was even harder to keep herself from remembering their times together, both good and bad, all of them tainted with the ache of betrayal and heartache. Eventually, though, she dozed. As she did, she let her hand dangle off the edge of the couch, so her fingertips just brushed the edges of his blanket. Finally, she slipped into a deep sleep.
She awoke hours later, roused by a sound, or maybe just an instinct. Going into doctor mode, she rolled over and moved to rise, opening her eyes as she did so. She froze for a half second at the sight of the empty spot where Romo had been.
Panic sluiced through her and she moved to react, but it was already too late. A mans figure rose above her, silhouetted in the dim light. She saw the glint of his eyes and teeth, and the shadows of his hands as he reached for her, grabbed on to her, his grip hard and hurtful.
Screaming, she exploded from the couch, but it was already too late. His hands covered her mouth and pressed her back down into the cushions, cutting off her air. Smothering her.
HE BORE DOWN while his enemy grabbed his hands, his wrists, her fingernails digging in as she fought, squirming and bucking against him. And yes, it was a woman, though that didnt make her any less the enemy. Why else had she kept him bound as she slept? She was one of them. One of the ones who hunted him, who wanted him dead. One of the ones whose faces had haunted him in his nightmares and dragged him back to consciousness.
Who are you? he said, his voice rasping with the effort his weakened self was expending to hold on to her, as sharp pain flared in his shoulder.
She whiplashed against him, her legs kicking out and meeting nothing but air. Not a trained fighter, his brain cataloged, but he already couldve guessed that from the way shed bound him, with cords that had stretched easily under pressure.
He mustve been weaker than hed thought, though, because seconds later she got away from him, clawing and kicking. She hit the floor hard, scrambled up and bolted for the door, screaming.
Damn it! Heart hammeringand not just from the fighthe lunged and his legs folded beneath him. Landing hard, he reached out with his good arm, snagged her by an ankle and yanked, bringing her down with him. Strength failing, head pounding with a relentless beat, he went with expediency and lay full length atop her, pinning her with his weight.
She struggled, still screaming, though her screams had turned to words. A name. Romo.
He didnt know the name, not really, but he was starting to remember the room. They had fallen halfway into a kitchen; a small night-light was on, allowing him to see more details of the homey, feminine space, and triggering the memory of coming to the house earlier in the day, knowing hed be safe.